Without fiddling the kernel to be non-PAE, recent Ubuntu-based distros seem to be off limits. I liked Mint's behaviour when I played with it at earlier times on other machines. How recent a version can I download to suit the lappie's specs, please?

Linux Mint 13 Mate is working perfectly on both my older (2003) computers, a T42 Thinkpad & Dell Dimension 2400. PAE is not needed for Mint 13, & it's a 5 year LTS version, which should be good for the life of the laptop. You can also run the XFCE version, however it's not as full fledged as Mate. If your installed RAM (memory) is less than 1GB, XFCE may be best.

Either way, there's two perfectly good choices for you. No need to run a overly unsecured XP, when Mint gives you two modern choices. You can make transactions, bank, whatever with no worries. ClamTK is a good optional virus scanner & BleachBit is an excellent browser cleaning tool, both available via the Software Manager.

I have a Compaq V2000 laptop which is also based off of the Intel 82852 chipset. Linux Mint 13 XFCE 32-bit works just fine on this chipset. But keep in mind though that, for the moment, those of us with this particular chipset are stuck with MESA 8.x, since MESA 9.x (which is bundled with Linux Mint 14) seems to break support for 3d hardware acceleration on the Intel 82852/85855.

To get an idea of what I'm talking about, many Windows games that ran fine on Windows XP on this same hardware won't run on Linux (via WINE or PlayOnLinux). Even the Linux-native port of the Steam client doesn't work right (graphical glitches on the client, plus the fact that many games won't even run).

Though, for some reason, even under Linux Mint 14 with MESA 9.x, I was still able to run a DVD film and it played just fine... but no 3D or OpenGL-based games.